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GM Issues Warning To Trump Administration Over Potential Tariffs, Could Lead To ‘Smaller’ Automaker

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General Motors has grown increasingly concerned over the potential for new automotive tariffs under the Trump administration and issued a stern warning: prepare for a shrunken GM.

Part of the two-page document submitted to the Trump administration reads:

If import tariffs on automobiles are not tailored to specifically advance the objectives of the economic and national security goals of the United States, increased import tariffs could lead to a smaller GM, a reduced presence at home and abroad for this iconic American company, and risk less—not more—U.S. jobs.

The tariffs under consideration would not only apply to fully imported cars, trucks and SUVs, but also auto components used for assembly in the U.S. GM said the auto tariffs, combined with steel and aluminum taxes, would be “detrimental” to the automaker.

GM’s comments added that “eventually” the effects will show face, either in higher vehicle prices for consumers, or increased global costs that leave fewer funds for investment in the U.S. and lower working wages. Since 2009, GM has invested $22 billion in American manufacturing.

The automaker ended its submission with vouching for a modernized U.S. trade policy—ones that leverage strength in global supply chains, per GM.

Yet, the administration called GM’s comments “smoke and mirror” scare tactics, and the UAW recently condemned the automaker’s decision to build the 2019 Chevrolet Blazer in Mexico. The UAW is also unhappy over Mexican Silverado production.

Poor Sean, his Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is still a work in progress as psychiatrists try to find the right balance of medication and electro-shock therapy to help him overcome his psychosis. The next 6.5 years are going to be hard on Sean, but we wish him well.

Sounds like GM’s plan to import more and more of their lineup from China and Mexico might be in jeopardy. The days where Charles Wilson’s adage that “What’s good for GM is good for America” are long gone. Further, all GM has done for the last 40 years is to ‘reduce their presence’ here so it wouldn’t be anything new for the company if they continue to shrink; it’s likely going to keep happening anyway with or without Chinese Cadillacs.

TDS ALERT!!! Trump Derangement Syndrome has taken over poor socialist Old Trombone too. Causes whiny cry-baby like rants about losing in the election. Might be worse than the meth epidemic…

Old Trombone, care to share your “Hillary has a 96% chance of winning the election” comments you and all the left-wing MSM made in the past? How right were you and they? But, but a book told me this and that…hahahahaaha. Sheep.

GM will only use China for low volume, niche vehicles. I’d expect the next Lacrosse, Regal, Malibu and Cruze to come from China. Otherwise GM will simply quit the sedan market like Ford.
No one gets upset about a German Regal but there is so much China and even Mexican and Canada hate on here.
Americans are clearly insecure when hating on Canada.

Coming from the never-ending whining and crying about Americans and America that in Canada by Canadians on a daily occurrence??? Canadians never shut up about Americans, talking endlessly about Americans in Tim Horton’s, universities, the American-obsessed CBC and other anti-American media in Canada….

Insecure? Canadians have the biggest anti-American inferiority complex in the world!!!!!! Coming from an Aussie that actually lived in Canada for two years and just couldn’t stand the b*tching I heard. You Canadians cant stop whining and crying about everything American. Seriously, dude, to be “Canadian” is to never stop is to have an inferiority complex about Americans on a daily basis…You talk more about Americans than Americans talk about themselves. Little dog complex. Sad.

Really, the Buick Lacrosse, Regal, Malibu and Cruze are all going to be made in China and exported to the U.S.? You are so sure of yourself? Like you were so sure that Hillary would be Donald? Like you were so sure those pesky Russians colluded with President Trump? Like you thought President Trump would be impeached before his first year was up…Yup. uh-huh, sure…

Which proves China is not the solution. If it worked, there would be many more and already since automakers have been building there for decades and China has an $800 billion surplus with us and is just waiting to flood the market with Chinese-made cars.

Ask yourself, why doesn’t Japan accept Chinese made cars? Not a single one is sold in Japan, a country so close to China they could almost throw them over there. Where is all the outrage from the uber lefty globalists on here?

The auto industry in China works primarily for the internal market. And that market is very profitable, which is why all major automobile manufacturers have accepted the joint-ventures forced upon them by the Chinese state.

That is like the development aid which the US-American industry got by the protectionism after the Civil War, enabling the USA to become an industrial power, and later by the product rationalisation pushed by Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover in the 1920ies enabling US industry to conquer the world by their cheaper exports. The USA was “taking advantage of” all the other countries, as the Orange one would say.

Now the Chinese automotive industry can stand on their own feet and begins to conquer the world, and shaping the transportation industry world wider (check out Didi, the Chinese superior of Uber). The joint-venture obligation is being dropped.

Geely, China’s largest privately owned automobile manufacturer is building a factory in the USA for their Volvo brand, which then no longer needs to be imported from China. Geely is the company which recently became the 49% operator of Malaysia’s Proton auto manufacturer, and 100% owner of Lotus (which once was a GM subsidiary, and develped the Opel Speedster). Geely also took a stake in the truck maker Volvo (not related to the passenger car Volvo) and Geely’s owner acquired a 9.6% state in Daimler’s capital, the owner of the Mercedes brand.

But you also have the Chinese Buick Envision and the Buick Cascada from Poland.

GM has been downsizing for years, nothing new here! In the last 25 years GM sold off many divisions( appliances, Detroit Diesel, Allison Transmission GM Heavy Truck and Bus closed Oldsmobile Saturnand Pontiac). Can’t forget about closing Holden MFG and selling off Opel, Most decisions made before Trump, what’s really new here?

Very well said. Alex and these other guys are extremely out of touch. Im a 12 year employee at GM and i want GM to succeed but the fanboy stuff only goes so far with me, unlike these other guys. GM is scared and its only because of imports into this country. A very small percentage of US assembled cars are exported out of this country. Very, very small. What sells in China is made in China. What sells in EU is made in the EU. What sells in Russia, Middle East, India is made there. The people who run this site are very out of touch.

No sir, “What’s good for GM is good for America” meant all time: get everything from everywhere! USA rules the world, and we take what we can get!

Ci2Eye wants to say that today there is the time to tighten the belts, shrink everything to smaller proportions, except the lavish life of the big billionaires and money grabbers as Mr. Trump is, whith his dozens of golf courses and Trump Towers around the world.

Or do you really think, that Trump would give up his world wide real estate empire? Never! Can you imagine Trump to go back to build modest apartment houses as his father did (well, that one used government programs, and did not rent out to colored people)?

I said nothing about the President or his actions. I am not here to debate/discuss politics specifically and your interpretation of my comment is wildly incorrect.

My point is that if GM says increased tariffs will lead to a smaller GM then:

A) That’s nothing new. GM has been getting smaller for decades.

B) A “reduced presence” would likely be the result of the many models GM might not be able to sell in their home market due to the fact that they are currently imported and would thus be subject to tariffs. Despite being considered a domestic automaker, GM imports many products including the following:

Most of Buick’s lineup is imported as well as some high volume products for Chevrolet and GMC. The thought that tariffs on imported cars would hurt foreign automakers and help American automakers is debatable. The largest exporter of automobiles from the United States abroad is BMW. Their South Carolina plant supplies the entire world with their SAV lineup while GM exports very little and imports a lot. Given the number of products GM imports, naturally they would say that tariffs will lead to a reduced presence at home.

Wha Wha Wha…Trump…Trump…Trump. LOL. Hearing left-wingers like you whine every day makes my world a brighter place. Karma is wonderful, isn’t it?

You lost the election. It is over 1.5 years ago. Hillary Clinton will NEVER be President. You lost, President Trump won. Trump will win again in 2020. Time to move on, don’t you think?

Sean, you really need to stop whining on here using Observer7 as your anonymous alias. Interesting how “Observer7” only shows up on this site when an article is posted relates to President Trump. Coincidence?

“Jonas” has no clue, and writes only about Trumpism while spewing out personal attacks.

But facts are stubborn things, and can cause headaches when you ignore them and bang your head to them.

Fact is, that the US automobile market is no longer the world’s largest, but has been bypassed some years ago by the Chinese, and also more automobiles are being produced in China than any other country in the world, including the United States of A.

The US manufacturers are no longer calling the shot, but the demands of Chinese consumers.

When are you rightwingers going to realize (wake up) that is exactly what Russia and China want more than anything else? A reduction of America’s capacity to manufacture large-powerful machines…

When are you rightwingers going to stop listening to a mouth and start watching ACTIONS that are actually happening? Why do you rightwingers put 100% of your brain behind what a mouth repeats endlessly while simultaneously doing the exact OPPOSITE?

So easy to shrink the danger by calling it a manufacturing “footprint” instead of calling it “the ability to make Sherman Tanks in larger numbers at a faster rate than the T34” which is why Stalin stopped at Berlin instead of Paris, if you knew your history…

The Battle of Stalingrad beat the Wehrmacht, not D-Day. If you won’t learn this lesson, then you aren’t learning for America, fool.

Manufacturing is still Everything in military circles. Ask Reagan, Kissinger, Bush 1, Bob Gates, even the previous Donald, the Rumsfeld one. Go on, ask them. See if they agree with you, or me…

Hey, OT, what do you think of Ontario, Canada recently voting out the leftist Liberals and electing a PRO-TRUMP, CONSERVATIVE? If a lefty bastion like Ontario, home to Canada’s automotive manufacturing base (or what is left of it) votes in a pro-Trump conservative for Premier, then it tells you what the world thinks of your “progressive” politics. Oh, and the Liberals were so badly defeated that they lost official party status, which means they are now classified as an “extremist party” much like the Democrats are in the U.S.

Not here, sorry. None of these fools have the syntax issues or the incendiary taunts. No, these triggered folks are the uneducated Dunning-Kruger / Kahneman-Tversky victims who “quote history” that is as real as the fables in their books of religion. Unfortunately they see history as a competition between books in a similar way as they see gods.

Like Kaepernick “represents” his culture and ancestors, “Bottom Cushion Bob” is the representative here, a guy who who holds Barra’s gender responsible for the collapse of the seat-cushion foam in his 1992 Blazer…

As a non union Chevrolet guy myself, I agree with the UAW on the Blazer and SIlverado. It’s sad to me that historic nameplates and trucks of all things aren’t being made right here in the USA. Not that Mexico is bad or anything else. It really has nothing to do with that. It’s just that Chevrolet was the Heartbeat Of America once upon a time. It seems like the only product they make that carries that tradition faithfully is the Chevrolet Corvette.

As a side note, I think this is just GM’s way out of downsizing and saving face. Perhaps it’s needed though. Like the bankruptcy and closing pontiac,hummer etc. IMO they probably wanted them gone anyway. And like what Harley is doing. They most likely had their objectives in the works already as well. They can save face (or try to) and just blame new trade policy.

Hitler tried to make Germany “autark”, self sufficient in everything. Then he had to conquer all of Europe to achieve that, and failed.

He who tries to make everything in his “own” country — and that means also only for his “own” country — suffocates that country. This means much smaller runs on everything, making everything much more expensive, considerably slowing down technical development, maybe with the exception of the techniques to control and keep people down.

There is no way to go back to the 18th century, when the farmers made their own buggies and horses and slaves… This world has evolved, and has enabled humanity to come together again after we left Africa and dispersed in all corners of the globe. We are coming together again as one global village.

Trump trumpets a big program of impoverishment, with his pipe dream to roll history back.

Every industry has gone global, and the automobile industry is no exception. Parts are sourced from everywhere and sent everywhere. GM itself has gone global already in the 1920ies by acquiring automobile manufacturers in other parts of the world. Trying to be self-sufficient means to get rid of all that.

GM is importing the diesel engines for the Equinox and Cruze from Europe; they are developed in General Motors Global Propulsion Systems Torino, and produced in Opel factories, which formerly belonged to GM before they sold them to PSA.

The proposed import duty for automobile parts would make those cars more expensive. Alternatively, they would not be available.

Initially, in 1950’s and 1960’s, the UK government showed a great reluctance to embed the common market when it was proposed to him. In 1973, it was later. If UK had entered earlier on this market, maybe, now, there would be still an british car industry. In addition, the merger between BMC and Leyland was “drived” by the government and it was a poor decision. The communist China is a perfect relay to the US Empire.

Trump should withdraw the United States from NATO as this would save the country $Billions in defense spending each year and it gives EU countries in NATO reason why they should rethink their tariffs on US goods because Canada and Germany could disappear overnight and become part of Russia.

The latest twist to this story is a report leaking from a meeting on July 4th of several bosses of German auto manufacturers and suppliers with the new US ambassador in Berlin: Richard Grenell (the man who on his first day in office barked orders via Twitter to German companies to comply with the aggressive US policy against Iran) is said to have proposed zero percent tariffs on automobiles and automobile parts between USA and Europe.

Well, the auto companies do not set tariffs, this is the business of the EU Commission, so the German auto bosses are the wrong adressee.

Also, this would be a TTIP extra light, you know, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership which POTUS Trump tossed aside on taking office, and which was much more encompassing, covering not only the automobile industry.

Since the “zero percent tariff” would mean the end of the US “Chicken Tax”, this would finally enable European automakers to export their LCV (Light Commercial Vehicles) to the US, and it would make their exports from the US to Europe somewhat cheaper (I do not have the hard figures, but I assume that the majority of auto exported from USA to Europe are BMW and Mercedes), but would not change much the situation for US automobile producers. Ford still does produce in Europe for the European market, and those other US cars which had not found a market today in Europe would not find it just because they are slightly less expensive. And all others would need first technical changes to pass the European certification tests.

As I said before, the main trade barriers are not tariffs, but certifications for technical standards and health and safety issues. That was taken care of in the TTIP treaty, which Trump as POTUS rejected.